Re: Photons
- From: piston <yru3@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:08:07 -0700
On Aug 6, 4:41 pm, Tom Roberts <tjroberts...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
joill...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Can someone please answer this question: A photon has an electric
field and a magnetic field that oscillate at right angles to each
other.
Not really. In a very real sense photons ARE magnetic and electric
fields, they don't "have" them.
if they are, haw are they,
in phase or in anti-phase?
[Note that photons are intrinsically circularly polarized...]
But SR says that in any system moving at the speed of light all
clocks are stopped. So how can a photon (moving at the speed of light)
have oscillating fields?
You confused the issue you are trying to discuss by bringing up photons.
Let me ignore the quantum aspects and just discuss light in classical
electrodynamics.
A light wave oscillates with a definite frequency and wavelength in any
inertial frame, but these properties are not intrinsic to the light wave
because they depend on which frame one uses to look at the light. These
inertial frames all move with speed less than c relative to each other.
It is not possible to consider things from "the frame in which the light
is at rest" because there is no such frame. This was one of Einstein's
essential insights. In the locally inertial frame of the light source,
or of any detector, the light oscillates with definite frequency and
wavelength, and that is sufficient.
Tom Roberts
.
- References:
- Photons
- From: joilly17
- Re: Photons
- From: Tom Roberts
- Photons
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